This invention relates to dental measurements as used in dental practice, apparatuses for making the dental measurements and techniques for making them.
Two types of dental measurements are Gothic tracings and vertical openings. They are made in the mouth of a patient using special tools. One such special tool is called a Gothic tracer.
As part of the processes of making Gothic tracings and measuring vertical openings, a dental impression is taken of the patient's mouth and then removed from the patient's mouth. The dental impression encompasses all of the natural landmarks within the mouth including the ridges, palate, buckle, lingual, libual, the teeth, and any other features.
These dental impressions are utilized by the dental technician or by the dentist to make upper and lower base plates. The lower base plate covers those portions of the ridge in which there are no teeth and a substantial portion of the lingual. The upper base plate covers the palate and the portion of the upper ridge in which there are no teeth.
The dentist or the dental technician mounts the base plates and the Gothic tracer together in wax. The Gothic tracer includes an upper portion called a striking plate and a lower portion having a mounting plate and a scribe, which are used in making the dental measurements in cooperation with the striking plate. The scribe includes a vertically adjustable screw member that can be adjusted in the scribe mounting plate to the proper vertical opening of the mouth and used to form triangular scratchings in a coat on the striking plate.
To make the Gothic tracing, the surface of the striking plate is coated on the side facing the scibe before mounting the striking plate and after the Gothic tracer has been mounted in the base plates, the base plates are returned into the mouth of the patient. The patient then moves his mouth in all directions with the tip of the scribe in contact with the striking plate. This action forms scratches in the coat in the form of a triangle and the inner most apex of these substantially triangular scratchings is called the centric relation.
In one prior art Gothic tracer, called the Swissident (trademark of Swissident Corporation) described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,068,570, the center screw or scribe is mounted for only perpendicular motion with respect to an integrally formed mounting plate in the lower portion of the tracer.
The prior art Gothic tracers have several disadvantages, such as: (1) they do not measure the angles of the planes of the jaw necessary for dentist to prepare the denture; and (2) they are limited in some respects in that they are not useful in determining the centric relation for orthodontic devices used for maladies such as dental malocclusion, or the like.